jug of breath (study)

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it. It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds. The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil. The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet of the trees whose mouths open. Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance? Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe, until at last, now, they shine in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking outward, to the mountains so solidly there in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea that was also there, beautiful as a thumb curved and touching the finger, tenderly, little love-ring,

as he whirled, oh jug of breath, in the garden of dust?

This funny little pot is my Sufi poet. Except he isn’t whirling; he’s at the center of everything.